


good enough

by liltingmelody



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 08:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11376264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liltingmelody/pseuds/liltingmelody
Summary: Because sometimes, breaking down their walls can bury them. And Vilde has been strong for too long.A Vilde character study, and the in-betweens of her relationship with Magnus.





	good enough

Vilde sucks at math, and yet she is always calculating. 

Calories, money for bills, the time from when her mother took her medication last, and her self worth. 

For as long as she can remember, she was always wishing to be someone else. As vibrant as Eva, as effortless as Noora, as happy as Chris, and as unbreakable as Sana. 

She hides from the mirror, unable to meet the sharpened eyes of a liar, as she puts on make up to hide how pale she looks after flushing dinner down the toilet, wanting to scream at Chris as her friend’s gaze lingers too hard on her trembling lip as she smiles that she’s fine fine fine fine, the forced eye roll-and-sheepish-laugh routine as she explains how they can’t hang at her house because her mother has another wine tasting.

You see, she was broken long before William tried to break her.

So when this boy comes along, with this stupid, wide grin whose eyes do not stray from her all throughout the Christmas party, she’s genuinely confused. It wasn’t low self-esteem, it was more like a cold sort of rationalism; why? Boys she fancied are supposed to walk right past her to Noora or Eva while she holds a bruising smile taut against her face and flips her hair and blinks and blinks while trying to stand straighter when all she wants to do is curl into a ball and weep. 

She can’t help but ask, why her? 

Her first thought is, he isn’t William, and she doesn’t know when that became a good thing.

**  
Magnus is patient, and for that, Vilde is so glad because he’s exactly what she needs—what she wants. 

They are so similar in so many ways, always seen as the ignorant one, the careless one, the silly one, and yet all their friends know that they could always rely on the two of them to be there. 

He wants more, and for some reason she can’t give it to him. They kiss a lot and she loves the way his skin feels against hers—like the winter sun—not too much, but enough to warm her down to her chilled bones. 

But vulnerability is tricky because it transcends flesh.

She can giggle at his dumb jokes, tell him about the Russbuss progress excitedly while he tilts his head in that special way when he’s listening to her, push his soft hair back and kiss him tenderly, and whisper dirty, sexual things to him, smirking at the way it makes his eyes pop wide, but that’s it.

There’s this wall, you see. 

She’s a girl who hides but wants to be found, she wants him to take it down, to tear it brick by brick, but he has to understand that she’s had it up for so long and the one time she let it down look what got in—

She can’t live up to what she sees in his eyes every time he looks at her. 

Isn’t there a reason her Dad left, and her mom chose her heartbreak over her daughter, and William thought she’s not good enough – it’s her, she’s the common denominator, it’s always been her. 

You can’t hold on when you keep getting shaken off. 

How does he not see that.

Her mind was a chaos of hopes and fears in collision.

He hasn’t even seen her bed hair yet, and the disaster she is the morning after a night of partying. He doesn’t know that she’ll somehow wake up screaming convinced her mom has left, or that on some nights she will randomly wake up at 3 am and start using her skipping rope because she just remembered she needs to work off the extra 50 calories she consumed that day, and that her teeth are going to turn rotten with white lies she tells. 

God, but she is tired of being lonely. She wants to rest her head on his chest, and let the weight slid off just for a while, just a second.

Her friends think they’re adorkable, and really he is because she can’t seem to stop smiling around him. He is even willing to go on runs with her, although dear God he’s unfit and she has to hide her smile before pretending to be tired when he wheezes after running for just two minutes.

It was so stupid, but she liked to fold some moments and press them close to her heart; he with his palms pressed against his knees bent over, heaving and struggling to take in a breath and she with her hands wrapped around her waist breathing hard too and maybe it’s just the way the sweat drips into his eyes as he looks up at her or the sunlight falling in streaks on his hair that she knows this is how she’s always around him—heart pumping wildly—so, so alive.

**  
They’re in bed, and her nose is against his shoulder when she wakes to his hands running through her hair. She smiles sleepily, reaching up to kiss him. 

“You know, I was talking to Isak at Sana’s yesterday, and he said something about you having Dominatrix fantasies about me.” She grins in the dark. 

Magnus groans, and Vilde can feel his face heat.

“I’m going to kill him.” 

“I like the idea.” 

He freezes and the silence is piercing before moves fast and she is underneath him. 

“What? Really?” She nods before laughing as he buries his face in her neck mumbling something like I’ve died and gone to heaven.

“Oh God, I love you.” 

The words slam through her and she tries to calm her racing, panicky heart by saying that it’s just the words of a lusty teenage boy and this moment would’ve been nirvana for anyone and that he doesn’t really mean it, but he lifts his head and looks at her with his eyes full of something she can’t decipher. 

“Vilde? I love you.” His voice is a whisper as he strokes her cheek.

When she doesn’t say anything, he stares at her for a long moment before rolling away and getting off the bed. He shakes his head, and his laugh is a harsh, sharp exhale as he puts on his clothes and stalks out. 

She dries her tears on his side on the bed for the rest of the night.

**  
There was a party at the Kollektiv to celebrate William coming back, and Vilde can appreciate the irony as she sits alone nursing her third glass of…something, she has no idea anymore. Her friends don’t ask, and she doesn’t say anything, but she hears Jonas tell Eva that he’s worried about Magnus. 

She avoids his gaze for the rest of the night, but searches for one she knows wasn’t going to be there.

She usually loves parties and dressing up but today, the room feels stale with smoke, suffocating, and her dress feels too tight as she struggles to breathe and she can’t help think it’s a perfect metaphor for her life.

She can’t deal with it, as horrible as it sounds, Sana blushing so prettily while texting and Vilde knew exactly who she was texting, Noora and William so dizzy and drunk and lovesick, with their heads bent together, and Isak and Even across the room but stealing such soft glances at each other her heart twists.

She’s on the roof before she knows it, taking in the crisp, cold air that held a fragrance of summer, leaning against the railing.

Her mother used to say that you should look at the sky if you wanted proof of eternity, but today it only cemented how alone and insignificant she was.

She smells the smoke before she realizes he’s there, right next to her.

She turns to him, unsure of what she would see on his face, what he would see on hers. 

“You’re here.” She breathes out, hating the way she sounds, desperate and scared and tired.

“Do you want me to go?” 

She sighs. 

“You know I don’t.” 

He nods, before bringing the cigarette to his lips again. He looks so different under the haze of the streetlights, so serious, the shadows highlighting his strong jaw, lighting up one half of his face.

“Why?” He says quietly. 

“I like you, really like you. And I…” She struggles for a moment. “I didn’t mean to make it so hard for you to like me back.” She looks down at her clasped hands on the railing. 

“I choose you Vilde, even if you don’t.” 

He reaches out to touch her arm then, putting his roots, waiting.

She knew he was waiting – waiting for her to push him away, trivialize the truth, say it was nothing, waiting for her to make it nothing. 

She’s done with lying, she decides, as she looks into his eyes resolutely.

“I know. There are things you need to know—things I need to tell you before we can do…this.” She says motioning to the space between them. “Just, give me some time.”

His eyes are bright and burning and tender. “I’ll wait.”

Vilde feels like floating, pumped with helium, her heart practically singing in her chest. She can almost feel perfect notes rising up between her ribs like perfect balloons or the warm vapours of hot tea on a cold night.

They stare out into the night, their pinkies touching.

He burns out his cigarette, but her hopes are just beginning to rekindle.

**  
Hi. Can we meet?

 

Sure. Wanna go for a run? 

 

How about tacos at my place? Want you to meet my mom.

 

She watches Magnus as he reads her text from across the room, looking up and practically beaming. 

Yeah, she thought. Chris was right. Sometimes you just needed a person to talk.

She chooses him, too.

**Author's Note:**

> the last Vilde/Chris scene was so touching and because Magnus's soft, unassumingly mouthed 'Everything OK?' would not let me rest until I wrote this. And because she deserved to have her story told. This is my first time, do review and let me know what you think.


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